Category World Affairs

Integrity Versus Elect-ability

  It was hardly a secret, but it became official on the weekend: Peter MacKay is running for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada. He seems likely to win – and I can’t think of a worse choice. It appears the party is confronted with a simple choice: integrity or elect-ability. McKay may […]

Revisiting Trump

I’ve been doing some “housecleaning” on my phone and found today’s post, which I had written to post around before Donald Trump’s election in November 2016, then an addendum to go with his January 2017 inauguration. It is a topic I explored in a book review last year, but I figured as Trump enters the […]

American Dreams

It has crept up quickly almost without my noticing – it is a presidential election year in the United States. Four years of Donald Trump has rushed by. Not that it has really been four years. With all the publicity surrounding the Trump impeachment process, it seems no-one is paying much attention to the upcoming […]

Stoning Revisited

As we count down the 10 most popular posts here in 2019, the one in the eighth slot was  one of only two actually from the year.   The outrage seems a little contrived to me. Or maybe it was a slow news day The headline said Brunei, a small southeast Asian nation, was implementing the […]

In The Trenches

Today we start a countdown of sorts, republishing the top ten most popular posts here in 2019. Of those only two are actually from that year. This one, though the tenth most popular in 2019 is actually the most viewed post of all-time here.   The years between 1914 and 1918 were the wettest Europe experienced […]

Impeaching Donald Trump

It doesn’t get much sadder. The United States has devolved into a cartoon democracy. The House of Representatives will vote this week on two articles of impeachment. With the vote expected to follow party lines, a Senate trial is a certainty. Certain also is his acquittal, as the Republicans control the Senate. The entire thing […]

The Never-Ending War

I was looking back through the archives for a “Flashback Friday” post yesterday, and came across this one from September 2014 that I though was worth sharing again. A century later, it haunts them still. The last Canadian veteran of the First World War died in 2010, and I would imagine that is pretty much […]

Making America Great Again

I woke Wednesday morning to an “Impeachment Alert” in my email inbox. It got through my spam filter, so it must be important. And I had been trying hard to ignore the ongoing impeachment proceedings in Washington. The Republicans want me to contribute to an emergency fundraising goal to “defend Trump.” They called me “Fellow […]

Wilhelm Who?

One of the things I find most appealing about travel is the opportunity to learn new things. You never know what you are going to discover, such as when I looked up information about this statue in downtown Vienna. Wilhelm von Tegetthof, who I had never heard of before, was an admiral in the Austrian […]

Remembrance Day 2019

  Canada remembers its war dead today, as it does every November 11th. It was on this date in 1918 that the “Great War,” the “War To End All Wars” came to an end. Today we know that the First World War was just the beginning. Most years of the 20th century saw war being […]